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This is TLV1. This episode may contain explicit language. Welcome to the Promise Podcast brought to you on TLV1. The voice of the city that is described in a just this week newly published major revision of the entry devoted to it in the who knew it even still existed? Which is super Encyclopedia Britannica by Professor Emeritus in the Department of Spatial Science, Iran Rosine like this quote, Tel Aviv's character is frequently contrasted with that of Jerusalem. Tel Aviv is depicted as the city that never stops, a thriving, vibrant, modern, dynamic and multicultural city, one generally characterized as tolerant, secular and liberal, while also materialistic and hedonistic. A city of the present lacking deep historical roots. Jerusalem, by contrast, is seen as eternal and holy, conservative, and an arena for major conflicts within Israeli society, including that between Israelis and Palestinians. It has been said by some that while Jerusalem prays, Tel Aviv plays In the past, Tel Aviv was negatively portrayed as a city that lacked character and was unpleasantly humid, ugly and prematurely aging, with decaying buildings covered in peeling stucco and small business blocks of stained concrete. However, these representations lost ground during the last quarter of the 20th century, partly the result of substantial beautification efforts, the most significant of which included a new orientation toward the beach, an area that had decayed for decades. Whereas past perceptions marked Tel Aviv as the stronghold of the non pioneering segment of Israeli society, later views have come to acknowledge Tel Aviv's importance as the engine of the Israeli economy and its rich cultural and entertainment amenities have been increasingly appreciated. Emerging civic pride has been based on the quality of life offered in the city and its metropolitan area. End quote. About which first, hats off to you Britannica for asking an actual human and so expert a human to write the entry for this most human of cities and for not even crowdsourcing the thing Wikipedia Ishly I would quibble only by saying that our emerging civic pride is now pretty much fully emerged, and that it is based not just on the quality of life offered in the city, but also on the heart of the city and its energy that fills you with joy and a sense of possibility and its ambient sociability. Everywhere people are talking, talking, talking, talking, and also by its oddness, the Elvis impersonator on the bench near the falafel stand on the boulevard that used to belong to David Ben Gurion's brother, the rabbi on inline skates gliding by with a Mashiach flag on a pole over his shoulder, the guy with the over the shoulder speaker leading a tour of sites of violent crimes that took place decade in this city and Maybe most of all by the fact that the city is so profoundly, so incontrovertibly Sababa and so manifestly and so intrinsically Akhla. But does that make it into the professor's account in the Encyclopedia Britannica? No. Now with us in the great underground vault that is the Serenity Studio Here at number 12 Lesser Horry street, is a woman who, very much like the city in which she lives and which I would venture to say she loves, is herself. Thriving, vibrant, modern, dynamic, tolerant and liberal. She's also mostly heart and fills you with joy and a sense of possibilities. I think you know that that woman of these qualities could only be Miriam Hershlag. Miriam herShelag is the ops and blogs editor of the Times of Israel, creating and residing over the biggest and most profound forum of Jewish discourse and debate since the Talmud was codified. Miriam was in the past the anchor of the Israel Broadcast Authority English Language Television News and an editor and anchor for the Israel Broadcast Authority English Language Radio News. Miriam, how are you doing?
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I'm great. And I'm sorry I was late, but I was lugging my Encyclopedia Britannica into the studio, the one that my mom brought from a traveling encyclopedia salesman when I was. When I was little, and it's a little heavy and you may hear some pages while we talk, because I always want to look things up.
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See, they stopped printing that thing in the last printing, which was I think, 2013, and I just thought that they stopped making it, but they've been making it. They're hiring people. Can you imagine getting the phone call or the email saying, would you like to write an entry for our encyclopedia? It seems so 20th century.
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It's only really worth looking at if your father is standing next to you and yelling about how anti Israel it is, and you're 11 years old
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now. As for me, my name is Noah Ephron, and I do not mean to boast, but I too have often been said to lack character and to be unpleasantly humid, ugly and prematurely aging. And please believe me when I say that I'm not bragging. God knows that my parents brought me up better than that. But just like Michael Roy and Nicholas Christenfeld found in their pioneering study in the Journal of psychological sciences, volume 15, issue 5, the title of which was Do Dogs Resemble Their Owners? That they found, of course, that yes, dogs do resemble their owners, at least purebred dogs. I think that I have come to resemble this city that I adore. And I know that the humans behind the Britannica arguably the greatest encyclopedia in all of human history, surely agree. Today we have two matters of spectacular concern. But first we have this matter that we are following with alert, interest and great concern as part of an occasional series we like to call the Promise Podcast Ponders Fetters, get and can't forget in the Republic of Letters One hundred years ago, on April 1, 1926, the first ever Hebrew Book Day was celebrated here in Tel Aviv, with stalls of Hebrew books set up on Rothschild Boulevard at the corner of Betsal Eliyafa Street. The thing had been some time coming in 1924. A regular writer for Haaretz, he was there when the paper started in 1918. Avraham Chechlov was his name, and he covered the Tel Aviv beat and did theater reviews and wrote phaetons, those short, colorful essays that were all the rage in Central Europe at the time. And on the side he translated plays for the Hebrew stage, like Shalom Ash's the God of Vengeance, which made a stir in 1924. Chichaglov wrote an essay in Haaretz called Hebrew Book Week that went quote before us is the Mishnah Tractate Shavuot Weeks. A true expert on this tractate. Going through it over and over again, ceaselessly, is the Central Committee to Promote Products Produced in the Land, which has come up with a wheat flour of the Land Week and confections of the Land Week and a furniture of the Land Week and a building materials of the Land Week and more such weeks are on the way. Lately we have gotten Healthcare Week. We can only hope that they will invent for us more weeks of different sorts, for the weeks that serve the general welfare of the public and benefit and improve the first Hebrew City and such. And because we are looking at this tractate of weeks, I suggest we open a new chapter, a Hebrew Book Week, because here is an open secret. The state of Hebrew books in the land is poorer and worse off even than the state of the Hebrew writer. It is true that in this arena there is no competition from foreign goods. Australian flour surpasses our flour. The terracotta roof tiles from Marseille interfere a bit with the sale of local tiles. But when it comes to spiritual products, peace and quiet rule, as foreign products are no more attractive or charming than local ones. And sitting on the shelf of the booksellers are important works from different fields of the arts and sciences, in our own language and in European languages, and no one wants to buy any of them. The consumer, the respected reader, has no time and attention for spiritual matters which are of no use when it comes to practical matters. How many Hebrew books on average are purchased by a well heeled Jew with a home in Tel Aviv? Which home cannot be imagined without a piano or at least a gramophone with which his daughters take care to keep up with the latest fashions for their frequent balls and dances? Yet here is a starting point for all our culture workers, the Battalion for Hebrew Language. Here is a slogan for you Put a Hebrew book in every Hebrew household. We live in a tumultuous generation. The momentum of one of Georges Carpentier's punches against Jack Dempsey is more interesting to most people than all of Einstein's theories. For weeks and months and years we sacrifice in order to achieve material ends. Let us give over one week to the Hebrew Book. End quote. Avram Chlov tended to see the bad in things, a trait much valued at Haaretz. When he died, just two years after writing his plea for Hebrew book week, only 35 years old, one of his obituaries said, we wonder if he ever hated a person in his entire life, yet human evil was always souring his heart. End quote. And his call for a Hebrew Book Week was passed around with approval, maybe most of all among the mostly teenaged members of the paramilitary paraliterary organization he mentioned in his article, the Battalion of the Defenders of the Hebrew Language, that had been started in 1923 at an emergency meeting held in Gymnazi Herzliya, Tel Aviv's high school, attended by both teachers and students, at the end of which hands were raised and a new organization was voted into existence. The teacher behind the initiative was named Herzl Ben Ami, the son of a great Zionist educational reformer from Minsk, Yuda Lieb Berger, who founded the quote unquote New Reformed Cheder in Pinsk, which taught algebra and Hebrew topics one would never find at old unreformed cheders, and best of all, it taught algebra in Hebrew. Herzl Ben ari was just 19 when he started the Battalion, a rare native speaker of Hebrew who thought the future belonged to his students, who deserved to grow up in the first Hebrew city free of the tongues and jargons that already in 1923 many people like him thought would have by now faded in the harsh Tel Aviv sun but somehow still had not. The Battalion for the defense of the Hebrew language embraced the idea of a Hebrew Book Week that might do the revolutionary work of nud people in the Yashuv, in the Jewish communities in Palestine, most all of them immigrants, to leave behind in the future the books of the countries that they had left behind in the past. A people needs a language of its own, and a language needs a literature of its own, and the literature of a language of a people needs readers of its own. And all these things, they would not just come as a matter of course. They needed to be coaxed and conjured into existence. It was around this time, and for these reasons that Chaim Nachman Bialik, the most famous Hebrew and Yiddish poet in the world, who had himself just moved to Tel Aviv from Berlin, decided once and for all to move to Tel Aviv. The Hebrew publishing houses he had started in Europe, first in Odessa and then in Berlin. He explained why in a letter he wrote in 1923 to some friends and colleagues, editors of a Hebrew literary magazine. At this time I said in my heart there is hope that the wisdom of the Jews that in quotation marks can become the wisdom of the Jews without quotation marks. We will once again link ourselves via the Hebrew language to the source of the vital creativity of the nation, becoming once again part of a living thing. A new heart and spirit will come and we will feel the heartbeat of a nation and all its revealed and hidden pains and wishes, healthy senses and good taste will return, and we will learn to tell the difference between wheat and chaff. By the time Cetyglav wrote what he wrote, Bialik's DVIR publishing house was set up and printing in Tel Aviv, where Its phone number was 360- Its managers were Bialik himself, Yoshua Chana Ravnitsky and Shmaryahu Levine. A Chadaam was on the board. The ambitions of the press were as big as Bialik wrote in his letter. He and Ravnitsky had just finally finished Sefer ha Gada, the book of legends that they had started working on in 1903, bringing together the stories and fables of the Mishnah and the Gemara, now indexed and organized stories and fables. Reflecting what Bialik said was the quote, unquote, renewal, freedom and spontaneity of classical Jewish literature. That it may be over the long centuries in the Diaspora, gotten lost or overshadowed by legalism, Dvir was printing Shimon Dubnov's 11 volume history of the Jews. The publishing house was working on a 25 volume compendium of Hebrew poetry, two volumes given over to Ibn Gavirol alone. There was a 10 volume collection of Jewish folklore through the ages. There were oversized books on the geography of the land of Israel. There were student editions of the Bible, there were Hebrew Kids books written to raise kids who would be Hebrews. Other Hebrew publishers were also opening up for business at around the same time. Half a dozen at least, and each had its own ambitions. Reuven Maas set up shop in Jerusalem. A man named Shachna Safdelwitz opened the Achi Asaf publishing house, which put out books about classical Jewish texts. Eventually, alongside a sex manual called Geber Vaisha man and Woman, written by a Hasid turned Chalutz nation, Mordechai Charizman, written under the pseudonym Ernest Heiskhar because, well, sex. A woman named Bracha Peli set up in her home at the bottom of Herzl street, the Masada publishing house, which set out to produce a six volume Hebrew encyclopedia edited by Hebrew University professor Yosef Klausner, Amos Oza's great uncle. And then she published two other needed classics like Josephus, the Jewish War. These publishers, they were all working to meet what they took to be a national need to give the Jews of the Yishuv a new heart and a new spirit of vital creativity. Like Bialik said, they were building a nation by creating a national spirit in ink, on pages, between covers. The next step was to get people to read the books that they were printing. And it was to Bracha Peli that the battalion of the defenders of the Hebrew language turned, asking her to help organize the first Hebrew Book Fair. And she on Rothschild Boulevard, the street on which a couple of years before that, she'd started a lending library in two small rooms she rented, which became a kind of cultural center and intellectual salon, with Peli importing books from Berlin, until finally she decided to print the books herself, eventually starting, like I said, Masada and the Peli print shop as well, which printed the books Masada published ahead of the first Hebrew Book Fair. The papers announced that on Cholamoed Pesach, the middle days of Passover, books would be sold on the cheap from tables set out on the boulevard. And there would also be, as the paper Doar Hayom, the Daily Mail reported it, balls, parties, lectures, public meetings, lotteries, concerts and such, the aim of which is to publicize Hebrew literature. End quote. On the day the police department band set up and played, while the people of Tel Aviv came in large numbers to thumb through books that they bought in small numbers. This was 100 years ago, exactly after this. For a time, the Hebrew Book Fair was an on again, off again affair. One year after the first one, there was in the yard of the Gymnasia Herzliya High School, a Hebrew book Evening tea followed by a ball. In 1929, the Battalion of the Defenders of the Hebrew Language organized a gala lunch event for that year's Hebrew Book Week, hosted by the great philosopher Hugo Bergman, who read a speech written by Chaim Nachman Bialik, who had fallen ill. And Professor Klausner came with greetings from the university. And then there were lectures about books and there were readings and a display of diagrams setting out the, quote, development of the printing of the Hebrew book in the land of Israel over the past 20 years, end quote. The next year, 1930, Doar Yom reported that there were by then 1700 different Hebrew titles for sale at the Hebrew Book week, organized into 10 awkward categories. Aleph, the Hebrew literature of the pre modern period, including Bible, Talmud, Mishnah, golden age of Spain, etc. Beth knew Hebrew literature, Gimel knew Hebrew poetry, Dalid translations, hey science, VAV books about the land of Israel, Zayin textbooks, Chet dictionaries, Tet journalism, Yod children's books. Hebrew Book Week that year was the site of 14 lectures, 17 concerts and eight plays. In 1937, Haaretz reported that a thousand young people crammed into the Edison Theater in Jerusalem to hear an Irgun command named Nahum Levine talk about the importance of Hebrew literature. Levine said, quote, in these years of leaving the Diaspora, rebuilding the wreckage of the land, and becoming once again close to nature and close to the life of work, on the one hand, and the return of the Hebrew language as the language of our life and culture and a unifying foundation that can heal the fissures of our nature on the other hand, we have come far, end quote. In 1939, the Socialist Daily Davar called on citizens of the land of Israel to use Hebrew Book Week to send books abroad. The crisis visited on our brothers in the Diaspora is not just a diplomatic and economic crisis, but a spiritual crisis as well. And in some countries, it is most of all spiritual. Tens of thousands of our youth preparing themselves to come to the land of Israel are now thirsty for Hebrew books, for Hebrew literature, for Hebrew journalism, for Hebrew science. You can buy Hebrew books during Hebrew Book Week and send them as a keepsake to your relatives in the Diaspora. Use this opportunity to buy them books during Hebrew Book Week, end quote. In Tel Aviv, the municipality worked it out so that you could buy Hebrew books at Hebrew Book Week and then have them shipped straight from there to your relatives in Europe living under the dark cloud of Nazism or wherever else in the world your relatives might be. The mayor of Tel Aviv, Yisrael Roqak reminded the people of his city that there were soldiers in the Jewish brigade defending them who might also like a Hebrew book sent to their training camps or to the front or wherever they might be. During World War II, Hebrew Book Week carried on in one way or another, as when the city of Colon, for instance, organized in its honor an exhibit of Hebrew publishing in wartime alongside lectures, balls and concerts. It was in 1959, in honor of the 10th anniversary of of Israel declaring its independence, that Hebrew Book Week took on something like its modern form and became a pretty standard institution. Book Week began that year on Yom Ha' Atzma' UD Independence Day, opening under a barrage of fireworks where There had been five or six Hebrew publishers 35 years before. When Avraham Chercheglav first thought up the idea of a Hebrew Book Week, there were by now dozens and dozens of publishers, kibbutz publishers and moshav publishers and scholarly publishers and kids, book and map book publishers and nature book publishers and poetry publishers and art book publishers. The man in charge of planning the 10 years of the state Hebrew Book Week was a poet and journalist named Shlomo Tanay, who described his vision for the week like years earlier. I was in Paris and I came upon a city square and in front of my eyes was a strange sight. The entire square was filled with bird cages filled with songbirds and birds of beauty. Later, when I was on the 10 year celebration committee, I remembered that bird festival. And when the people on the committee were trying to figure out what to do in the realm of culture to celebrate a decade of the state, the tweeting of the birds in an open square came back to me and I pictured crowds moving among stands, end quote. Instead of birds there would be books. That is how Hebrew Book Week moved from busy boulevards to languid city squares. That year, with the backing of the government, the country had the biggest Hebrew Book Week festival it had ever had. And then it was on the calendar. And it happened like clockwork every year until the corona made it impossible in 2022. Although it became bigger and more established, there was a magic to Hebrew Book Week that never went away. Things happened there. The poet Dorri Manor tells how it was at Hebrew Book Week when he was 19, a soldier, that he happened on a book of translated from Yiddish poems by a poet named Avram Sutzkever and he fell in love, going back that night to the n narrow kid's bed in his small kid's bedroom in his parents apartment, repeating to himself out loud lines from poems in the Sutzkever book that he had just bought. Later Manoir wrote, quote, about the poet himself. I asked no questions. How he found his end was clear to me. I had no doubt that he was murdered in the Holocaust. After all, he wrote in Yiddish. And what is more natural for a poet who writes in Yiddish? This is what every Tel Aviv kid like me was trained to think than to die in the Holocaust. Yiddish was a ridiculed and disparaged language, the defeatist language of old men with saggy skin, of numbers on the arms of hardscrabble women grocers and of wary humored and greasy Yiddishkeit. End quote. Then Manoar goes on, quote. It was evening at my parents house a few months later and the phone rang. I picked up the receiver. May I say speak with Mr. Dorrie Manor? A voice I did not know, with a heavy Jewish accent, asked, it is Avraham Sutzkever speaking. I never dared tell him that. This was how I learned he was still alive. He'd read my translations of poems by Baudelaire and wanted to talk. End quote. Dori Manor's sad, angry novel about growing up gay in my neighborhood. Ahofa Dati came out just last year, published by the publishing house Bialik, started 100 years ago. I'm reading it these days. Nurit Peled Elhanan today, a renowned philologist and emerita professor of comparative literature and a leftist activist, and the daughter of Mati Peled, a renowned general and peace activist and politician who met with Yasser Arafat in Tunis in 1983, when that was still illegal, and who was a member of Knesset for four years representing the Jewish Palestinian Progressive List for Peace. She says it happened at Hebrew Book Week. I had one of those dark days when I saw three movies one after the other, and I could have ripped limb from limb any living thing. I was standing next to one of the tables saying about the books, that one's trash, that one's disgusting, that one is bad. And the seller, he sells me the shittiest book. And he says to me, first, read them after that, tell me what you think. Here is my number. And that was it. Two days later we were married. End quote. That was at Hebrew book week exactly 52 years ago this week. And the bookseller and the book buyer are still married today. Every year with the start of Hebrew Book Week, the New National Library puts out a report on what was written and published during the prior year. This year, like last year, a section of the Report is called the attack on October 7th and the swords of Iron War, where we find that 511 of the 7029 Hebrew books published this year were about October 7th and what came after. That's one out of every 13 and something books. And this does not include books of poetry that are not cataloged in a way that says what they are about. A book of poetry is about, well, poetry. And probably of the more than 500 poetry books printed this year, and maybe another couple of hundred, you feel the war too. And the library report says that since October 7, 32 months and one week ago, as I record, more than 2,100 books have been published about what happened on October 7. And after that, maybe 2,500 books, if you count the poetry. The exceptional volume of publications reflects the ongoing effort, effort to document and process the events of October 7th and their effects on Israeli society, the Jewish world and the international arena. End quote. The National Library people write in their report. I rolled all this over in my mind the night before last as I biked over to Hebrew Book Week this week in Sirona. And I did that with some concern because what happens to the celebration of Hebrew Book Week, of looking out and seeing tables and tables and tables of stacks and stacks and stacks of books and books and books? What happens to the awe and wonder of the thing and to the pure joy of the thing when the stack, front and center of the Matar publishing house table, surrounded by people leafing through a copy they've taken from the stack, is of Rachel Goldberg, Poland's book book, when we see you again, in Hebrew that says on the first page, after having his dominant left forearm blown off by a grenade, Hirsch was taken from the bomb shelter in which 29 music lovers were hiding. He was loaded onto a pickup truck with three other young wounded men. They were driven to where they all endured an odyssey of suffering, starvation and torment that is hard for me to cook into digestible words. He and five other young, luminous and beloved hostages endured starvation, torment, lack of hygiene, and a complete severance from the world in cramped tunnels 66ft underground without electricity or plumbing for 328 days. And then they were all executed at close range, end quote. Or what happens to the joy of Hebrew Book Week when the three stacks in the front in the middle of the Sela Meir publishing house table are all of Eli Sharabi's book Hostage Khatuf. That starts, five terrorists enter with weapons drawn. We are in our pajamas. They come in uniforms, balaclavas and Kalachnikovs. They found us. Me, my wife Leon, our beautiful daughters, Noya and Yahel, and our dog. We are in our safe room, a reinforced shelter in our house that's supposed to protect us from rocket attacks, not intruders like these. The dog barks in distress. She does not like strangers. The sound draws the terrorists fire and the sound of their gunshots ricochets off the walls. It is deafening. Leon and I jump onto the girls to shield them, checking they are not hurt, and shouting at the terrorists to stop, begging them, do not be afraid. They reply in Arabic and demand that we hand over our cell phones. I look into my daughter's eyes. Noya is 16 years old. Yael is just 13. I try to reassure them. They do not scream. They do not cry. They do not even speak. They are frozen in terror. I will never forget that look of terror in their eyes. End quote. The worry that I have for Hebrew Book Week is a special case of a worry that I worry a lot. The sadness and the anger and the despair that we have all of us felt now for 32 months and one week. These things are big enough that they might just take over. Well, everything. If over the past 32 months and one week, one out of every seven books published, 2,100 out of a little over 14,000, has somehow been about Hirsch Goldberg, Poland and Elie Sharabi and all the others, then what will survive of the sheer joy of the other six of seven books, like the new one I wrote down to buy about the songwriter Yair Rosenblitt, or that revisionist history of the Maharal of Prague, or that new graphic novel by Tohar Sherman Friedman about the two teenage girls who fall in love at an Ulpana yeshiva for girls. And when I got to the fair, I saw right away and everywhere the October 7th books. You could not not see them. There were the memoirs by the hostages and by the moms and dads, wives and husbands, daughters and sons of the hostages. At the DVIR table I stood for a while and read from Maxim Herkin's book about how he hid from his captors for 738 days that he is an IDF officer and how he underwent a forced conversion to Islam. At the idiot table I read some of a book called the Main Thing is to get up to a New Morning by Aviva Siegel, who got out of Gaza after or 50 days and then waited for 434 more days for her husband Keith to get out. There were the memoirs about people murdered on the day and men who died in the months and years of fighting that came after. There were books about Hamas and Hezbollah. There were books of military analysis about how this or that campaign was fought. There were books of political science about how the conditions took shape such that October 7th could become October 7th. There were dozens of books, maybe hundreds, about the trauma of it all and how to get past it and make your peace with it, like Sari Mandel's Back to Life had a Rise and Grow After Crisis, or Yossi Levi Belez's under the Black Skies, conversations about spiritual pain, suicidal ideation and hope. And there were lots of kids books like Tooley and Libby, that starts Tully and Libby's Abba Went to the Reserves and He has Not Yet Come Back. These are strange days. And there are books of theology, a tale of a tzadik and a stretcher. There are graphic novels, the Day When Everything Changed, Noga Friedman's First Person Plural, a book about bereavement in full color about her partner Ido Rosenthal, who was killed on October 7. There were hiking books like Bishvilam, which is a play on words that means both for them and in their path, and the subtitle is Hiking in the Light of the heroes of October 7, with 18 hikes and bike rides, each in a place that meant something in particular to one or another person who died. For Shani Luk, a hike through the Tsa' Ara Forest that she loved so much. For Ori Danino, a bike ride through the Israel Valley where he rode. For Omer n Utra, a walk near Yardenit, near the Kinneret, where he always went. And it was a lot, but it was different than I worried it would be. For one thing, a lot of Hebrew books never go out of print. That book by Bialik and Ravnitsky, Sefer ha Gada, the Book of Legends that was at the very first Hebrew Book Fair. It was there the night before last, at the table of the same publisher DVIR this edition, with a better index and a new commentary by the great scholar of Hebrew literature, Avigdor Sinan. But. But it is the same book. There was Janusz Korshak's Haddle of a Child, translated by the great translator and disciple of Korshak, who worked with him in his orphanage on Krachmalna street in Warsaw and survived to carry on Korshak's work. And Bialik's poetry was there, and Rachel, and so much Uri Zvi Greenberg and Shlonsky and Alterman and Leah Goldberg and Abba Kovner and Chaim Ghori and Yuda Amichai and Nathan Zach and Dalia Rabikovich and Dan Pagis and Ted Carmi and Jonah Wallach and Me Wieseltier. And all these dead poets, they are on the table near the living ones. Aggie Micholl and Erez Bitan and Roni Somak, our family poet, ever since the boy took a poetry writing course with him in the museum when he was in sixth grade. And there were all the books of Gershom Shalom and Martin Buber and Hugo Bergman and Yeshaya Lebowitz and Jacob Katz. And there were books and books by Rav Adine Steinsaltz and Rav David Hartman and Rav Avraham Yitzchako and Cook and Rav Ovady Yosef and Rav Aharon Lichtenstein and Rav Menachem Froman. And there were novels by Mendela Mohesh Svarim and Yosef Chaim Brenner and everything that Chai Agnon ever wrote, and Samech Izhar and Amelia Kahana Karom and Pinchasadeh and Aaron Applefield. And they were all the old kids books, Dira la Skier Tiras Cham Maseb Echamisha, Baloney Mitz Petel Hasamba Abo Sebushot. They were all there, all those books were there on the tables, all the books that had ever been there since 1926. And the new books, they are in piles in the front mostly, and they catch your attention and you pick them up and you read them and you feel moved and sad, but already you can see that these books, they have a place at the table, a big place, but they do not fill the table. And you find yourself glancing from Tully and Libby to Janusz Korshak's Matt the King, thinking these books, they have something to say to each other. And you notice that across from Rachel Goldberg Polin is the old 1970 translation of Viktor Frankl's man in Search of Meaning. Ha Adam mechapest mashmaut. And you see at once how much these two geniuses of the human soul, Rachel Goldberg, Poland and Viktor Frankl have to say one to the other, and how much their books have to say one to the other. And at Shavuahasefera Ivri Hebrew Book Week, you can see among all the tens of thousands of Books How October 7th is finding a place among all the rest, fusing into all the rest, going through the transformer and coming out somehow less unique, less sui generis, less irreducible, and more a part of the knit of the whole thing, its tragedy part of a weave of tragedies. Its heroism's part of a line of heroism. The breast beating theology that comes from October 7th, a chapter in a bigger story of our anxious wrestlings with God and the world. The poetry just more of souls seeking solace, as poets always have. At 10pm a voice came over the public address system telling us that the fair was closed for the night and in case we did not get the message, a minute later the lights flashed off. I biked away, feeling something like hope, I think, because the books on the tables had gotten something that I hadn't gotten, that whatever we've had for the past almost three years, for the past 32 months and one week, it won't pass, of course, because nothing really passes, nothing really goes out of print. But instead, instead something better is happening. These years, the years we're living now will find their place among all the others. And then tomorrow we'll bring new Hebrew books. Today, two discussions, our first, this great deal as the Americans and the Iranians have already docusigned a memorandum of understanding that they plan to have diplomats sign in person in Switzerland tomorrow as we record. And US President Donald Trump says it is a great deal, and U.S. vice President J.D. vance says that right thinking Israelis like the deal quite a bit. We will talk about what the memorandum says and what we maybe right thinking Israelis maybe not think about it at the moment. And Discussion 2 the great comeback of singing together as even before October 7th and ever so much more so after October 7th, Shirabatzibur communal singing has experienced a surge in popularity around the country, seemingly among most everyone here, and we will wonder why this is and what it means. And for our most unreasonably generous Patreon supporters, in our extra special special extra discussion, the link to which you can find in our show Notes on your podcast app or at patreon.com promisepodcast@ theWorld Wide Web, where, by the way, you can send us a note and we will eventually answer. We will talk today for you unreasonably generous Patreon people about a surprising essay in the Free Press by Rabbi Janna Samuels, the CEO of the JCC in Manhattan, nyc, headlined the world wants you to believe that Jews are divided. We are not. And this essay contains, and I say this earnestly, one of the great lines in all of English literature. Yiddin, don't despair. Like those munchkins coming out gingerly Tentatively, after they think maybe the wicked witch is dead, we will ask, is it really safe to say ding dong? But before we get to any of that, please listen to this. That song is Basa Noga by Noga and Neshama. Miriam and I were arguing about the autotune while it was going on here. That is more music of these strange days. And now it is time for our first discussion. So, Miriam, Trump promised a great deal, and now he says he's delivered a great deal. That's great, right?
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B
Late last night, around 1:00am here in Israel, the news landed that the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran signed an agreement that takes us into a very new reality. The negotiations had dragged on for weeks, but Sunday, on his 80th birthday, Donald Trump was in a triumphant mood. Even before he settled in to watch an ultimate Fighting championship exhibition on the White House lawn, the US President posted to Truth Social, quote, the deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to us all. I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz. Ships of the world, start your engines. Let the oil flow. An hour later, Trump posted, this great deal will bring peace and security to the whole region. Many presidents have tried to make peace with Iran and all have failed before me. The leaders of the region have for the first time found a president who can help them achieve real peace. After a few days of agonizing over leaked drafts, the full final text became public just around 9pm last night, Israel time. It was signed a few hours later. So I'm now holding the great deal here in my hands. And it's, well, it's, it's a memorandum of understanding. So it's not the deal, it's the draft outline, a framework for negotiating a deal. But still, still, this memorandum of understanding is already changing the region's strategic landscape. It may not be the deal, but it is hella ambitious in its 14 points. It aims to settle nearly every major dispute between Washington and Tehran. So in broad strokes, the framework does these six things. First, it ends the war. The United States and Iran commit to an immediate and permanent cessation of military operations, including in Lebanon, and pledge not to use force against one another in the future. Second, it reopens the Gulf. The United States agrees to lift its naval blockade and eventually pull forces away from Iran's vicinity, while Iran agrees to restore commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and ensure safe passage for vessels. Third, it provides Iran with sweeping economic relief. The United States agrees to release frozen Iranian assets permit Iranian oil exports, work toward lifting all sanctions, including American, UN and IAEA related sanctions, and together with regional partners, develop a reconstruction and economic development package for Iran worth at least $300 billion.
- [43:31]
A
$300 billion is like one fourth of what Elon Musk has. I didn't realize what a huge sum it was until I realized that that's a quarter of Elon Musk's wealth.
- [43:43]
B
Fourth, it creates a framework for addressing the nuclear issue. Iran reiterates that it will not develop nuclear weapons. The two sides agree to negotiate what will happen to Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium, discuss the future of enrichment and place any agreed arrangements under international supervision. Fifth, it establishes a 60 day negotiating process. During that period, Iran will maintain its nuclear program at current levels while the United States agrees not to impose new sanctions or deploy additional forces to the region. And finally, it seeks to lock the whole arrangement into the international system. The final agreement would be monitored through a joint implementation mechanism and ultimately endorsed by a binding United Nations Security Council resolution. Here in Israel, the deal to reach a deal has been widely criticized for all sorts of reasons, of which three stand out as the most troubling. First, critics argue that the language committing the parties and their allies to end military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, will constrain Israel's freedom of action against Hezbollah. Second, the exclusion of Iran's ballistic missile program from the negotiations, implicitly endorsing the Iranians right to make and stockpile thousands of missiles that can reach any and everywhere in Israel. And finally, the deal that President Trump called great does not require the destruction or export of Iran's enriched uranium stockpile, instead leaving open options such as on site down blending under IAEA supervision vision. Still, U.S. vice President J.D. vance told reporters that the Israelis should calm down about the deal. In the end, Vance said, the deal will create a new Middle east where Israel will thrive. In fact, Vance said, there are elements within Israel who like the deal quite a bit. So Noah, since you are in fact an element within Israel, do you like the deal quite a bit.
- [45:45]
A
The element that I like to consider myself is hydrogen.
- [45:49]
B
I thought it was humidity. It's true.
- [45:51]
A
That is true as well. Oh my God. Oh my God. I would also just like to say that it is nice to have an opportunity to use the verb to downblend, which we don't use as often as we used to. I feel, and I'm happy to have this opportunity. How much down blending will there be? To what percentage will we downblend the uranium? This I'M trying to find a way to not have this seem to me to be as disastrous as pretty much everyone here is saying that it is, that we have not heard very much at all from coalition politicians. We have not heard very much at all from the prime minister. And we haven't heard very much at all from the boosters and supporters of the prime minister and colleagues and fellow travelers of the prime minister about this. I think that it is true what I heard on the radio biking over here, that the prime minister is in a state of shock. So said one of his ex chiefs of staff that he just at this moment does not know what the right way to respond to this is. And I think that that is a probably a proper response on the part of the prime. It is hard to figure out a proper way to respond to this. First of all, there's the issue of the ballistic missiles that you mentioned, Miriam. Donald Trump went further than the language of this memorandum of understanding simply does not include anything about these. And so then when he was asked on the tarmac outside of Air Force One what whether it was okay in his mind that the Iranians produce and stockpile ballistic missiles, President Trump said, yes, they should have some missiles.
- [47:53]
B
Oh, and if Saudi Arabia can have them, then then Iran should be able to have at least some, you know, that's what the way he put it, you know, it's just not fair.
- [48:02]
A
Right. So, so there's that is shocking to hear and it is, of course, disastrous. It's important to keep in mind, by the way, that our reaction, my reaction is primarily as an Israeli remembering what it was like to be in the shelter for that month and what it could be like to have that become a permanent part of my life, to always be under threat of rockets in the way that the people outside of Gaza have felt and the people just beneath Lebanon have felt for years and years and years. There is that. But it's important to remember that there are many other countries in the region like Saudi Arabia that you just mentioned and the UAE that are also, you know, feel betrayed and threatened by this and for whom the ballistic missiles are also quite important. Ballistic missiles are more important for getting farther away, like in Israel. But the fact that the trap is what you mean leaves intact the production of missiles and the stockbinding of missiles in Iran is terrible news for many, many people here. The fact that like you mentioned, that Lebanon is explicitly mentioned in here as being linked to Iran, the fact that Iran can demand and have the demand be assented to that Israel not Actively fight Hezbollah in Lebanon is stunning, is remarkable, and of course, it is a terrible thing. It was noteworthy, again, that the US President said that in any case, Israel seemed to be doing a lousy job fighting Hezbollah and that maybe the Syrians would do a better job fighting Hezbollah, which he advocated. That is another shocking fact that of course illuminates how deeply the United States president does not understand even very foundational facts about Middle east power relations. And it's just quite unnerving. The degree to which Israeli concerns were not at all taken into account in the framing of this memorandum is again, shocking. I mean, maybe it shouldn't be shocking because we felt that it was coming in this direction over the last weeks. But even still, finally seeing was to me, a shocking and deeply disturbing thing. Now, of course, one thing about this memorandum of understanding is that very, very likely it is, is all that we will ever see in it is as close to an agreement as we will ever see between Iran and the United States during the Trump administration. Donald Trump, of course, has a pattern of action where he introduces a temporary thing that ostensibly is leading to a permanent thing that would be based on much more rigorous analysis and much more complicated agreements. And then the second more rigorous and complicated thing just never comes. That's what we've seen in Gaza, and that's what this seems to be, a pattern of action. And very, very likely this is similar. We have enough experience with Iran to know that in 60 days it is very, very unlikely that they will agree to meet all of America's terms. And so then exactly what of this is implemented is not clear from reading it. I don't know if those $300 billion will go to Iran before the final agreement or whether that's part of the final agreement.
- [52:03]
B
It's a process that at least as it's being laid out by Vance, it's some sort of plan for a long future of reconstruction.
- [52:10]
A
So then at minimum, and it's possible that the minimum is the maximum that we're going to see from this, what this does is trade opening the Strait of Hormuz for the United States immediately beginning to work to undo all sanctions and immediately undoing United States ian sanctions against Iran and allowing Iran to begin to once again sell its petroleum on the world market and restore its economy, as well as the very, very first promise in this memorandum, which is that the United States will not seek to interfere in any way with Iran internal politics, meaning that it will not seek to keep them from from building factories that do anything in particular or so it's, it's breathtaking in a way. What did you think, Miriam?
- [53:06]
B
I have opened the, this image right now.
- [53:10]
A
It's Edvard Monk, the scream.
- [53:12]
B
Yeah. So I, it's a scream for me. But. And I mean, just agreed. Missiles. But it's also very damaging when you say, like, if somebody walked into this story right now, they would think, oh, there was a war over the Straits of Hormuz, where Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz and choked off 20% of the world's shipping traffic. And so the US had to go to bat for to open up shipping. And that, of course, was not a war goal. It wasn't a war problem until Iran figured out that that's what it was gonna do in its next move. And now this becomes the big, you know, achievement is, oh, we Strait de Hormuz. And it's worse than just having opened it. It seems to open the way for Iran, in fact, to become a toll collector for this very, very sensitive area of traffic. At least that's what we're hearing right now. Things are still very new, but that's what it looks like. And certainly that's what the Iranians. The Iranians are touting this as an incredible victory for them. I would say. Let's, you know, you've talked a lot about the scream side of it, and I've mentioned. I agree that this. But I will temper this with a couple of things. One is it's a memorandum of understanding. It's an extremely volatile and changeable moment. Anything can change. And also, Iran has suffered tremendous devastation. And in some ways, you can take it to, okay, that means that the surviving regime is now a more bitter and more oppressive regime than ever, and it will be run by the irgc, and it's going to be an even more brutal regime. And I think that is likely. And at the same time, its vulnerabilities remain. That $300 billion is a rebuild that's going to take many years. And it's true that they have missiles that are extremely compromised, though. And Israel holds a great deal of intel it didn't have. It knows a tremendous amount. So we're at least militarily in somewhat of a better position, with or without the Americans. And so that's, I don't know, it's cold comfort, but it's a bit of framing. What I wonder about now is where does this take us in the political life of Israel and the United States? Because this is basically in the US it's putting lipstick on a pig you know, they're going to say, well, look, we brought. They're already saying we brought the price of oil down from 120 something a barrel down to 80 something a barrel. And in Israel, we're already seeing Netanyahu starting to shape the narrative and say, I saved us from total destruction and who else could have done this? And I think that it's going. If I didn't think it was going to be a brutal election campaign, I think this spells even greater brutality for the kind of division that is going to be sown, the kind blame that's gonna be aimed in all directions. I believe that even the families of the hostages, as we've seen, are going to be blamed for the lost losses or for the lack of full, total victory in Gaza. And I think a great deal of toxicity is gonna come internally from the.
- [56:30]
A
Oh, I think exactly the opposite is going to happen because this is so extreme. And basically there is no one on the right wing who thinks that what happened is not disastrous for the country. And I think we're very, very close to a rare consensus Israeli politics, that this is terrible and there is no one who can easily be blamed for this particular deal other than the prime minister and the coalition. But let me ask you, what do you think?
- [57:00]
B
I suppose that's a form of optimism, but I will say I would have thought that was the case until I saw what they did to the hostage families and what Channel 14 did to the hostage families by demonizing.
- [57:11]
A
This is a very, very different sort of. Because this is much more centralized. This is about diplomacy. It is not enough. Had very, very little to do with the Iranians. And I think that that's. But let me ask you this, let me ask you something different. What do you think that Netanyahu is going to do about Lebanon? Because he faces a very, very stark choice. Either he buckles under and just pulls out of Lebanon or remains in Lebanon in a min. Ceases to attack, certainly Beirut, or he says, I refuse to accept this, and as a matter of principle, he attacks Beirut. These are the two paths that are available to him and they lead to very different results. Certainly in terms of American, Israeli relations in the age of Trump, what do you think he's gonna choose?
- [58:05]
B
I think it's worse than that because there isn't a clear. I mean, it isn't as if the solution to Israel's problem is to attack Beirut. Beirut. It's, it's, you know, even that is unclear and debatable on every. It's, it's not, it's not like, okay, we've got this path forward, we know how to solve this problem, and all we need to do is to be given full license to.
- [58:23]
A
No, it would. The question is the signaling, what does Israel say?
- [58:27]
B
Israel has already said it's going to. It's going to do what it needs to do in Beirut.
- [58:30]
A
But will Israel do what it needs to do? Will Israel signal to the United States and Iran that it is unwilling to abide by this agreement, or will it not? That seems to me to be the very, very difficult challenge that Benjamin Netanyahu faces this morning.
- [58:48]
B
I think, though, that's a question of message shaping. And what Israel and America are going to say to each other and about each other is very difficult.
- [58:56]
A
No, it's a question of who you bomb. If Netanyahu wants to say that we
- [59:01]
B
are bomb, you can bomb and you can say something different. That's what we've learned from these people. You can say, well, this was a small bomb and yet it was a big bomb. And Trump has the same capacity to simply say what he wants to be true, to be true.
- [59:15]
A
Benjamin Netanyahu faces a stark choice, I think, between saying we will abide by this agreement or we will not abide by this agreement. He has many different ways to make this statement, all of them having to do with bombs and guns, I think. But in any instance, which of those two things do you think he will say?
- [59:34]
B
I think he will say we are going to abide by this when pushed for that. And then I think he will do what the brass thinks, the military brass thinks needs to be done. That is the way I think they've run this before, and I believe that's the way it's gonna go forward.
- [59:51]
A
I admire that answer, and I admit that.
- [59:53]
B
And then the real player in this is not those two, but it's Iran. And Iran needs to decide whether it gets back up on its hind legs or it takes the $300 billion that it desperately needs. Everyone has some choice in this, Miriam.
- [60:05]
A
We're never going to get to the. We're never going to get to the final agreement that is gonna unleash that it says will happen in the final agreement. That's never gonna happen. What we have is what we have now, and that's all there is going to be. There will be talks, but there will not be a further agreement. Remember, the same 60 days was that were the 60 days that it was gonna that we're going to produce the final agreement in Gaza, and there hasn't even been beyond the ceremonial opening meeting of the group that was going to begin to negotiate that there has not been a single meeting.
- [60:37]
B
This is what it is.
- [60:38]
A
This is what it is, I think. But and I admire what you said about your answer about Netanyahu. I think that that possibly could be true. And I find myself amused to be saying to you of all people, this thing. But I think given the fact that we are facing elections, Prime Minister Netanyahu will not decide to do anything other than to demonstrate that we are not going to live with this agreement by attacking in Beirut and inspiring the ire of Donald Trump, believing, I think, as he will, that we will be able to mend our relationship with the United States after the elections. But he cannot go to the elections without attacking in Beirut.
- [61:28]
B
Well, we can go the poly market direction, or we can just say and say we really don't know.
- [61:34]
A
What does polymarket say?
- [61:36]
B
That's, I think, what we need to say.
- [61:38]
A
Okay, people, listen to this. That song is Abasheliakar by Ziv Shachar and Ori Shochat. And now it's time for our second discussion, which we are calling the Great Comeback of Singing Together. And here is why. The popular daily paper Yidiot had a big article in one of its weekend supplements last Friday headlined the Voice of Israel. The subtitle at asked, among other things, why of all times in these days when it seems like everything is falling apart, is Hebrew song managing to join together Israelis who do not agree about anything? What explains the great comeback of Shirabatzibur communal singing? The article focuses on two of the country's most popular communal singing entertainers, a woman named named Einat Sarof, who regularly hosts singing evenings, and a man named Moshe Lahav, who tours the country with a phenomenally popular show called Hattish Hagadol, the Big Tish Tish being Yiddish for table, a reference to the Hasidic tradition of gathering around a Rebbe at his table on a Shabbat or holiday eve and ecstatically drinking and singing and hearing stories and words of Torah. Also relatedly, Martin Scorsese is famous for lavish dinner table scenes, as in the Copacabana in Goodfellows scene and that scene with Katharine Hepburn in the movie the Aviator. And Martin Scorsese famously studied at the Tisch School at nyu. But I digress, though maybe it's not a digression. Maybe it's an important digression. Einat Sarof and Moshe Lahav each regularly sell out singing events in venues that hold hundreds of people at a time. Each is also a practitioner of an art, leading groups of strangers in song that many predicted would die out 25 years ago. And they do this all over the country, including regularly in places one might imagine to be too cool for school, to plunk down money to sing old songs with people they don't know. But as the article describes, even a venue like the Tamuna Theater in Tel Aviv several times a month, sometimes as often as five or six times a month, hosts sing along sessions that have only grown more popular in each of the past few passing years. Moshe Lahav, who leads singing at Tamuna at least once a month, tells how the evenings he hosts attract a diverse crowd. Moshe Lahav said that quote at the height of the demonstrations against the judicial reform. One night people came into Timuna straight from the Kaplan street protests, wearing protest T shirts and carrying a flag, as protesters did, and the only table with empty seats was already partially occupied by people wearing knitted kipot. My gaze stopped for a moment at that table because each group was wearing undeniable identifying signs. The traitorous leftists and the religious Zionists sat together and they sang together, and while singing one song, I saw them hugging each other. I was moved, I admit, but I was not surprised. The songs are unifying. It is like the great Hasidic Rabbi Schnorzamen of Ladi said, the tongue is the pen of the heart and the song is the melody of the soul. End quote. The article goes on to describe how much communal singing there was after October 7th. Einat Saroof tells how already on October 9th she was leading communal singing sessions for communities evacuated from the settlements just outside of Gaza, and how movingly and powerfully the people in the hotel lobbies or community centers sang, often through tears, and how they kept her for song after song long after she planned to stop reading it. I rem the Havdala ceremonies that Susan and I went to most every week before the weekly vigil and demonstration for the hostages in Hostage Square in front of the museum, which Havdala ceremony was basically just singing together for 45 minutes, mostly songs made famous 30, 40, 50, 60 years before, songs of the Good Old Land of Israel, as a series of already back then nostalgic records by Ari Einstein in the 70s and 80s called them the first time they had the Havdala service, which was led by a soulful Reform rabbi named Mira Regev. There were maybe 30 or 40 people who came each week. The numbers grew and by the end there were hundreds. There Each week singing together. Sometimes as many as five or six hundred people in circle outside circle outside circle. Singing, singing, singing. The songs we sang, they were mostly the songs we used to sing together as kids in young Judea, at camp or at conventions in Hasid Square, it sounded like. Like this. Now, as I was writing my notes for what I'm saying now, it was one in the morning, the night before last, and through my window came the sounds of people singing together. And I looked out the window and on the rooftop across the way, across the boulevard were, I don't know, maybe a dozen, maybe 20 people, people sitting in folding chairs on the roof at one in the morning, singing together. Now, Miriam, what explains all of this? Why the renaissance of shirabatzibur of communal singing? And why are we singing not just. But mostly songs we sang as kids or songs that were sung by the parents of a lot of the people who are singing them today, and maybe even their grandparents?
- [69:12]
B
Yeah, look, humans sing. It's part of being human. And when we don't sing, it's a. It's a sign. And when we don't sing, a community, it's a sign of loss. And I think it's an incredible lesson. And Israelis sing more than normal. They always have. It's really built into the DNA of the country. It's built into the whole youth movement culture, and it's just incredibly important. I would add the article is really mostly an interview with two people who are a little bit similar. They're in their early 60s, and they kind of, you know, it's not.
- [69:51]
A
They're the two biggest people in the
- [69:52]
B
field in that particular area. Although Kululam, you could argue, has a whole. Brought a whole other dimension to this. And I think probably they can get
- [70:00]
A
thousands of people, they can get 5,000 people.
- [70:03]
B
And that's a group that just, in the small event that you may not have heard, they actually create these incredible musical projects, you know, in real time with three part harmony with large audiences, and they're quite extraordinary. And the experience that people have is, I think, even a ramped experience of that communal thing. And also, if you go to concerts, I mean, it's true, not only in Israel, people sing along at concerts, but I think more so. And I think you'll hear performers who come from outside of Israel be a little bit, you know, surprised, hopefully for the better, you know, for the good, about how, you know, how important it is to Israelis to sing along all the words with all of their songs, you know. So Leonard Cohen talked about that actually, so we're singing, we're a group culture, which I think is part of it. I think for me, the two things that stood out was the concept of singing after October 7th. For me, all I could do after October 7th was cry. And I don't think I sang. I care deeply about singing. I think it took a long time before I felt like singing was even something that could be part of my repertoire. And I think it's very moving to hear that, that people who had experienced this horror in a much more direct way and had been evacuated and were homeless and were mourning and were waiting for their hostage people to get released or terribly worried were able to bring themselves to sing. And I think we understand that as a therapeutic human activity. And I mean, I think also it's worth mentioning that those were generally people, you know, that description of people who were released, many of them were people who lived in strong face to face communities along the Gaza border, for example. So they had already that language of what you do in sad times and glad times. And I think that's a really, really helpful kind of piece of our cultural sort of habits that we have here. And the other thing about this is the songs. I mean, there are like dozens of songs and in this piece, and I don't know if there was a single one from this century, I'm pretty sure that there wasn't. Maybe Yhoram Gaon's version of Beshtemot Bethlehem, which is, by the way, the other thing about this, for me, as someone who considers myself kind of educated musically and at least I can recognize and hum along with the melodies, you know, through. Whether it's because I learned them in our youth movement, Young Judea, or I pick up things quickly from the radio or Israeli dance, I'd say about a third of them I really didn't know. Like, to be really honest. I mean, Israeli songs you can pick up after the first verse. That's one of the great things about Israel. It's not. It's generally not that hard. But yeah, I think that this nostalgia definitely makes sense. I mean, there's a lot of new music, as you always bring to this. And I was next to. I was in a store yesterday and a guy. It was not a store. I was ordering salad and the guy next to me, something was on the radio and he was singing every word to a song I never heard. So there's a great deal of new music. And oh, by the way, I was also, I have to admit, secretly pleased that the song Hashem O Hevoti was not included as a standard in this. It's one of the new songs that came out. And it doesn't. I don't know if it.
- [73:45]
A
God or Hashem Loves Me, God loves Me.
- [73:48]
B
It's part of, I think, a triumphalist and trauma rooted song that I always feel a little bit uncomfortable. But I admit that I hum along. So I thought it was a lovely piece and mostly had a fantastic adventure opening every, like looking up every single song in that article and, you know, look, we sang, you know, I promise you there will be no more war. Yeah. And so some of those songs are very hard to sing. Now.
- [74:25]
A
I'm not entirely sure that I see it as exactly nostalgia, but putting that aside for a moment, to the degree that it is nostalgia, what is it nostalgia for exactly?
- [74:40]
B
I'm just gonna suggest. I mean, they did say all ages. I'm gonna suggest probably the crowds at these might skew a little bit older. It has to be. These very old songs are not songs. Our kids know some of them. So I'm gonna say that some of it is just. It's an act of collectivism that could feel more important at this time of division. And, you know, and they describe simpler times or, you know, they've got like old humor from the army. A lot of them are army songs that came out through the army troops singing troops, performance troupes and those. I think there's a. You know, the army has always been incredibly popular. It is the institution Israelis most trust. And in this sort of iteration of it, post October 7, the chapash, the foot soldier, he is the sort of an emblem of. And actually now the reserve soldier, they are emblems of self sacrifice and suffering. And our feeds are filled even today with fallen soldiers. So a lot of those military sort of inflected songs, I think are something that people may value a little more right now.
- [76:05]
A
So one of the things you're saying, Tell me if I'm wrong, is that the fact that was described in the article that you find at these things, people who by all outward appearance must be right wingish, sitting with people who by all outward appearance are certainly left wing. Ish is not some anomaly. But in part, one of the things that people go to experience is having this fellow feeling with people who in another context you view as being, you know, different from you view as being a stranger view as being other. But in this particular context of singing, they're suddenly brother again.
- [76:51]
B
Yeah, I think. I don't know. None of this is statistical. Right. There aren't really numbers in this. We don't really know this. So it's. Part of it is. It's a story we want to tell ourselves right now. And the story many of us want to hear here is one of the takeaways of the massive mobilization following October 7th, where you had so many images that showed people from across various divides working together to do this very elemental thing of saving lives, of feeding, clothing, people who had lost everything. So I think that that message is very much echoed in this story we want to tell about how we can sing together. And it is true. It might have been a kind of a story Jews could have told each other about synagogue, about knowing the basics, which is no longer true of Israelis, where you could go anywhere in the Jewish world and everyone would know the words of the Shema and the Kaddish. And so these are their cultures, natural binders for us, again, at a time of division.
- [78:01]
A
I'm glad to hear you say that, because one of the things I thought about this is that this communal singing is a form of prayer for people that don't have prayer and don't seek prayer, including for people who don't have prayer and don't seek prayer, who don't believe in God or don't want a relationship with God or whatever. But it feels to me, it feels somehow like an act of prayer. And then to find yourself in this most intimate, most sort of spiritual moment with people who, again, at any other time, you might see as being them and not us. But to suddenly be part of this community of spirit with these people is a really powerful thing that a lot of us never experience ever at any time, except for this very specific.
- [78:56]
B
I think in some ways, our listeners outside of Israel can understand this better. There's this growing movement of song which, like the Hadar Institute has the. Or the Hadar has the Rising Song Institute, where people gather to sing Jewishly. And I imagine there's other stuff there too, as well. I've never been, but I think that is being understood as, if not a substitute, an extender of. Of our way of sort of embracing a bigger, wider diversity of people around community in this musical way. And it's also like. It's very therapeutic. I'm sure all kinds of clinical data shows us that singing makes us healthier. I know it in my. I feel it in my heart when I sing.
- [79:47]
A
Studies have shown that we tend to end up looking like our dogs. So I think that this is possible. Possible as well.
- [79:53]
B
Anything's possible.
- [79:55]
A
Now listen to this. That song is Lev Laban by Shuli Ran More music of these strange times. You can find all the music you heard today in all the usual places, of course, and now it's time for our Voda country segment. This is a part of the show in which each of us describes something that may be surprised and amused, delighted and enchanted and sorceled, or possibly even fluked us as we wended our way through our world over the last little while. Miriam what is your what a country.
- [81:56]
B
Shopping malls everywhere double as entertainment venues, and the mall at the base of Tel Aviv's iconic Azri center is no exception. Over the years, its rooftop has hosted outdoor movies, electronic music parties, DJ nights and art exhibitions. Right now, though, there's something else up there and it feels very Israeli. Or maybe more precisely, very Israeli. 2026 the exhibition is called Me Po Nakum We Shall Rise. It's an immersive multimedia installation that combines photos by the famous photojournalist Ziv Koren with text by the famous lyricist and writer Noam Khore. You go in with a headset and audio guide, you get a trigger warning on the way in, and then you move through a series of stations made up of projections, films based on Corin's photos and Kharev's poetic text, along with narration, music effects and physical props. The production values are really terrific. It's a fascinating effort of curation and creation. Not art, not documentary. There's no data, there's no time. Timelines. I'd call it a national trauma exhibit right there on the roof of a shopping mall. The first station, Grey Sunrise, conveys the devastation of October 7th. There are no corpse images, but yeah, destruction, desolation. These images are projected onto the facade of a damaged kibbutz home, a sort of theater set with actual children's toys, like a tricycle strewn at the base. The photographs of those days are animated with these very interesting three dimensional effects and the words of the Kaddish sort of scatter and dangle disconnected on the screen. An IDF soldier weeps while another comforts him as they stand near a Shabbat table with chalot on it in a home in Kibbutz Far Aza, whose residents were murdered on October 7th. Horev's poem says, I don't have enough eyes to cry for everyone. At once one station focuses on the soldiers, combat troops entering Gaza tunnel searches a helicopter evacuation of the wounded and then dropped into this There's a gorgeous bride in a white sheath gown and veil, posing with her groom in his reserve duty fatigues on the turret of a tank. It's Tal and Rome's wedding days after October 7th in the assembly area of Rome's battalion near the border with with Lebanon, those impossible juxtapositions of celebration and catastrophe that we all experience. Horev's line how can we speak of spring when we have brothers imprisoned in darkness? Another section, called the Human Spirit, is about recovery. It's an extraordinary sequence that follows Dr. Elay Hogeg Golan and her toddler daughter, Yael, from kibbutz Kfar Aza. Both were severely burned when Hamas terrorists set fire to their home with a family trapped inside. Over time, we the healing unfold, rehabilitation, growth, and the birth of another child. Another station celebrates the volunteer mobilization that followed October 7th. The accompanying text exhorts us not to forget those months when Israelis pulled together without regard for identity politics, a fitting reminder as we get into the thick of what will most certainly be a horribly divisive political season. There's a section devoted to the hostage movement that's the closest the exhibit gets to political partisanship. There's a station devoted to the missile war that leans into the camaraderie of helping people and meeting neighbors in the bomb shelter. The final image is Gadi Moses, the oldest surviving hostage, an agronomist standing in a potato field with earth on his hands, his arms spread wide to the sky. It's an image of national resurrection, but in case that's too much bombastic, I will say this about Gaudy Moses. We went to the opening of the exhibit, and he told the story that not long before October 7, he'd managed to get a new identity card, Atihudad Zahut, after dealing with bureaucratic delays for eight frustrating months during the time he was held captive in isolation. When he wasn't solving math problems in his head, he imagined a conversation he'd have with an Interior Ministry clerk about having yet again lost his ID card. He imagined her her saying that getting abducted and held by terrorists for 482 days was a lame excuse. Now fill out this form and that form and wait. But then he said that when he was released and taken to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, a new ID was already waiting for him. Why can't the bureaucracy be that efficient, even during normal times? He asked. That sour humor might be an even better image of national resurrection. But as I walked through the exhibition, I did think about Lisa Flegel, the therapist who died recently and who I spoke about on the podcast a couple of weeks ago and she worked with evacuated kibbutz residents in eilat shortly after October 7th. And she said that the role of a therapist is to bear witness, to reflect back to people that the thing they can barely believe happened to them was real. And I think this exhibit is an excellent, by definition, imperfect effort to do that. The thing about the images in this exhibit is that, sure, they're taken by an incredibly professional and talented photojournalist, but they also feel like family snapshots. Many of us keep them in a massive jumble in a giant drawer in our heads. We carry them with us to bed and to the weddings we attend and to the store. And here, somebody or a team of somebodies has taken them out and arranged them in a kind of tangled order, which we can go to or not go to see on the roof of a mall.
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Wow. I'm going to go to see.
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Yeah, it's worth it.
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On Kibbutz Kera last Thursday, under a chuppah, under the 8 Tse Elon, the Royal poisiana tree in front of the Merkaz building, the kibbutz center. Itay said this, among other things, to Zoe. Zoe, stopping now and again to wipe away tears. My Zoe, how can I put my feelings for you on paper? And how can I share them with everyone here? How much luck I have. How what how? What a privilege it is that you are in my life. What a privilege that you saw me, 18, looking like 14, a bit of a geek, apparently, just the right amount, coming to visit you on the late bus from Jerusalem, going in through the window, straight into your room. To us, that seemed romantic. There's not much romance in Davitka Square. But from the moment we got there, at the foot of the Naamani bakery, I knew that we would get to this moment, under the most beautiful poinciana tree in the country, surrounded by our family and our friends and our community. The thing I feel strongly is that you are just my home, my beautiful one. How can I describe what you are to me? You make me laugh, you move me, you astound me. How beautiful you are, your sensitivity and your wisdom. When you are sad, I am sad. When you are on edge, I am no less on edge. When you are happy, I am happy. When you laugh, I am content. I am bound to you with all my heart, all my body. How special you are, my Zoe, an endless source of energy and justice. You want to devour the world, and at the same time, you always want to fix the world. The smartest person in the room. And somehow also the coolest. You do seven things at a time, one more important than the next. But you somehow never need to sacrifice yourself. A single trip to that wine bar we like or a beer with a friend. How many worlds you have shown me. And how many things I've learned from you. How to listen to music. How to dress, even if that took a while. And how to be honest with myself and with you. How to dance and how to travel. And how to surrender to a moment, a trait of yours that I love so much. I learned how to listen truly, not just as if, with my eyes and with my heart. How to grab new opportunities and more often to leave my cynicism behind. And maybe most important, how to be a friend. There is no greater privilege than being your friend, as the hundreds of friends who are here with us will attest. You are a friend with all your heart. You give all of yourself over to it when you need to. You know how to say the right words. I hope that I can be for you what you are for me for the rest the world of. Of our lives. That I get up each morning at your side and go to sleep every night at your side. And to be there at your side at any moment of the day. And beyond all the promises I have promised in our ketubah and in the ceremony, I will repeat the most important. I will always, always be there at your side. And for your sake. I love you as much as there is love. And on Kibbutz Kera last Thursday, under a chuppah, under the eitzeilon, the royal poinciana tree, Zoe said. It is not fair to go second. And then she said, among other things, to itay, stopping now and again to wipe away tears. Cold itay, I love you. I love everything in you. The good, the bad, the tall, the short, the serious, the funny. Everything. I love how you smile, how you sing in the shower, how you make coffee, how you fall asleep on the sofa. I love life with you. I love our home. And it is not just me who loves you. Everyone who crosses your path falls in love. You are approachable. You have warmth that draws everyone to you. Somehow they know that with you they have someone who will listen. And also they will have the calm and space to be themselves. And I, me, out of everyone, I have the privilege and the honor to be your partner for already more than 10 years. To grow up with you and together, to get to know the world. Being your partner means that I get to explode with laughter every day like a little girl to laugh with my whole body. Because even though you are the smartest person I ever met, you are are truly free. Freedom that lets you laugh and make other people laugh without a drop of cynicism. Being your partner also means that I am learning all the time. Your curiosity surrounds our home. It is impossible to know what we will end up talking about over our morning coffee. It can be anything from new restaurants that opened in Paris to a new strata of rock discovered in the Arava. You have no fear of not understanding something and no concern about coming. Coming off young. You ask and you show interest. And usually you end these journeys knowing more about whatever it is than most anyone. Being your partner means that I have a constant reminder that it is possible for things to be different. That you do not need to compete or be jealous or to fight. That there is an abundance to the world and there is no reason not to be generous with things. And most of all, with feelings. Letting the people around us thrive will only brighten us. This is a simple truth of which, in your special way, you remind me every day. There have been many dark moments over the past years. Moments that raise fear, Moments that have made us want to turn around and run away. But when I reach out my hand in the darkness and find your hand, even this damaged world feels like a project that can be fixed. A project that is worth fixing. And we've said more than once, what does it even say, us getting married, if we already have this security in what we have? Who needs the fuss? And after countless discussions of the matter, I still don't have a clear answer or a very smart one. Only that forever does not scare me. Not when it is by your side. I do not know what the future has for us, what rough spots there will be, what things we will go through. But I promise you, you, my beloved, forever. An eternity of friendship and partnership to be there for you. First of all, as a partner, you will always find me behind you, no matter what. An eternity of belief in you, in us, in your strengths, in our strengths. An eternity of concern. Know always that I will not let anything bad happen to you. An eternity of honesty between us and space, where we can find calm and everything that matters. Where we give and get and love with honesty. I love you. And when Zoe was done next to me, Susan was wiping tears from her face. And it was all beautiful, of course, to people young and gorgeous. In that way that some young people can be brilliant in both ways that we use the word. So smart and also luminous, dazzling and surrounded by family besotted with them, and friends besotted with them. And like everyone, I am smitten. It has happened just once in my life that I had a thought like this 10 years ago. And the thought was so strong that even though there is nothing stupider that any father could do, I still did what I did. And I said to our then 15 year old boy, you know, you should fall in love with Zoe. And instead of rolling his eyes like me, like he had every right to do, the boy was earnest and he said, it's too late. Zoe is going out with Itai. And that was it. And I never again had a thought like that and I never will. It was just Zoe. And that was when she was 15. And since then she hid an injury so she could enlist in an infantry unit, a fighting unit, Bardalas or the Cheetah Battalion. And she went to law school and she worked her way through it with a job with an engine, fighting to make the government govern with principle. She was in charge of local governments. And next year she's off to Oxbridge for a time and after that she will be clerking for one or another Supreme Court justice. And Itay was something fancy and important in the army. And then he went to grad school in public policy and now he works at the treasury, finding ways best to fund huge transportation infrastructure projects. And after October 7, after the first round of the reserves ended and they were back home, Zoe and Itay started a hamal in Jerusalem, one of those places that did everything all the time for anyone who needed it. And it was months and months of hardly sleeping, just helping, helping, helping. And what Itay said about devouring the world and also fixing it, it is true for each of those two and most of all for both of them together. Which is why Zoe and Itay getting married felt to me and I think to the hundreds of people standing in front of the poinciana tree, like not just an act of hope, like all weddings are, I guess, but like a sign about our future and how it will in fact be better for me. And not just me, there were other things. Susan and I, we had our wedding dinner under the poisiana tree. It was smaller then, and our chuppah was on a lawn 200 meters to the west. Itay is the boy of Udi and Tovala Ghat, who came to the kibbutz a few years before us. They were in a gareen of the Tzofim, the Israeli scouts, and they were married here too, and they were I thought then and still think now, as wholesome as can be and as Israeli as can be, and the best meaning that I have for that word. Udi commanded a battalion in the army, and when I met him, he was in charge of the scouts all through the country. He was maybe Itay's age today back then, and he still wore the scout uniform for events and when he was on TV talking about the scouts. And he became the head of the regional council for all the kibbutzim and moshavim above Eilat for long, kind of the mayor of the whole area. And he was visionary. Those fields of solar panels that let the Arava live off all renewable energy, nothing but renewable energy, that was him. And Tova, she's a naturopath and a dietitian and she's had 16 different positions on Keturah, including Maski Ra again, the mayor of the place, like Bill Slott was and like for Bill Slat and others there, the kids kibbutz really was and is Udi and Tovola's life's work. And go in any direction from the Poisiana tree and the place that kibbutz is full of life and beauty and creativity. As good a place as you will find anywhere better, really. And Zoe is the girl of our friends Robin Klein and Alon Tal, who lived on to Ra and left around when Zoe was born. And Robin worked for a foundation called Nala and for long periods, she spent long periods in Africa helping people get safe water and sanitation. And though Robin is much, much more than that. And Alon, he. Well, he is. He's everything. He started the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, an NGO that changed everything about environment and environmental activism in the country. And he started Aktura, the Aravah Institute that brings together Israelis and Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians and to study green things together for degrees. And he started the Green Party that Amen. And he was a member of Knesset until a few years ago. And he is like Zoe, devouring the world and fixing it always. And standing in front of the Tse Elon in front of that tree, my mind cast back to when Tovela and Robin, Udi and Alon were Zoe and Itay. And who knew really what would come of them? And when Turah was a small place and who knew really what was would come of it. And looking back like that, I found myself with Zoe and I think for the first time in a couple of years, not scared about the future, because all of it, Robin and Tovah, Udi and Alon Keturah itself and of course much more. Bill and the hundreds of people dancing in circles after Itay broke the glass. All of that gave us Zoe and Itai and Zoe and Itai, I'm pretty sure that they will give us forever. And that brings us to the end of our show. Huge thanks to Itai Shellam, our station manager, without whom there would be none of this. And by the way has been bringing us these shows week in week out for years and years. Thanks to Achibo Lim, my favorite band from Kibotskeva. They give us some music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you Miriam, thank you Natalie. We'd like to thank all of our Patreon supporters for your generosity and support that keeps the show going and the station going. We are moved and GR grateful and very much in your debt. And we'd like to thank all of you out there for taking your valuable time to listen. And we'd like to ask you to like us on Facebook and then go to Patreon and drop us a line. We are eventually going to answer. After you do that, go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. Maybe one that starts with this, the promised podcast. Come for the desperate attempts at being funny and entertaining. Stay for the weird and dark miasmic psychological substrata beneath the desperate attempts to be funny and entertaining. Da da da. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that today, as we record on the third Thursday of June, we celebrate World Tapas Day, or Dia Mundial de la Tapa, so stipulated way back in 2014 by the Spanish association of Destinations for the Promotion of Gastronomic Tourism, with the aim, of course, quote unquote, positioning and promoting the tapa as a beloved food around the world. The holiday is celebrated by eating tapas, which are small portions of food served with drinks and eaten with others. They can be as simple as just a little teeny plate of olives or anchovies or cheese. And they can be as elaborate as fancy chef creations like an Adjo blanco cold almond and garlic soup served with smoked spice, sardine, green grape and toasted almond crumble. And the holiday is celebrated by talking about tapas and even by just quietly thinking about tapas, which I have been doing all day so far this year. The theme of World Tapas Day is, quote Support for the candidacy of Tapas for recognition by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO as part of the entire intangible cultural heritage of humanity. End quote. Incredibly, While UNESCO recognizes 849 different things as quote unquote intangible cultural heritage. There's reggae music of Jamaica, Neapolitan pizza, violin making in Cremona, falconry in England. It has not yet recognized tapas, which talk about your global injustices. So this year the Spanish association of Destinations for the Promotion of Gastric Astronomic Tourism recommends that we mark the day by writing Outrage to the un. Put tapas on the list and I probably do not need to describe for you the passion that I myself feel for World Tapas Day. It is probably my favorite day of the whole year because tapas can be delicious. And also those little plates, if you hold them just right, you can feel like you're a giant. And obviously I instructed my AI agent to send in my name a long email to the UN Secretariat of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Tangible Cultural Heritage with the subject World Tapas DEI request to consider tapas for UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Recognition that started Tapas are not merely a category of food. They are a living social practice, a way of gathering, conversing, sharing, moving through public spaces, sustaining local culinary knowledge and transmitting regional traditions across generations. End quote. Boy, that does sound like AI, doesn't it? And even though the day is not yet half over, as I find myself clicking Refresh over and over again in anticipation of a satisfying answer from the Secretariat, already I can feel world tapestry starting to go away. Just like that. And we gotta be honest, that tiny speck of food you get on that itty bitty plate not to return for a whole year. Not so the Promise podcast. We will be back for you next week and most every week, reminding you that while tapas makes you see how small things can be truly beautiful, all the more so when you contrast them to things that are monstrously bigger or in the event, longer than they need to be, showing you that big and bloated can be brutal, bleak, blighted, beastly and just plain bad. On this, the Promised podcast.